As dissent surrounding Steve Alford’s hiring grew in the weeks after he was named UCLA’s newest basketball coach, a bevy of voices chimed in on how Alford should fill out the remainder of his staff.

But when Alford’s three hires were made, Ed Schilling, Duane Broussard, and David Grace looked nothing like the conventional choices that many urged Alford to make. But as the fallout from Alford’s hiring has subsided, those three assistants have already made quite the impression on UCLA.

THE TECHNICIAN

Quietly and unbeknownst to many, Schilling is credited with the development of a handful of NBA All-Stars and other contributing NBA players. From former No. 1 draft pick Greg Oden to Memphis Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley Jr., Schilling’s reputation as an unrivaled basketball technician precedes him.

Yet, last year at this time, Schilling found himself in a high school gym, coaching Indianapolis high school basketball at Park Tudor High for the fourth straight year.

It’s an odd set of circumstances for such a well-respected developer of talent, especially given the fact that within a one-year span (1996-97) Schilling became the only coach to advance from the high school ranks to the Final Four (with UMass and then-Coach John Calipari) to the bench of an NBA team (joining Calipari after he was hired as head coach of the New Jersey Nets).

But after stints as a head coach at Wright State and re-joining Calipari as an assistant at Memphis, Schilling decided that he wanted to be home every night with his kids. So he poured all of his energy into his basketball academy and St. Vincent Sports Performance’s NBA-readiness program, all the while streamlining his philosophies on development.

And at Park Tudor, Schilling could test those philosophies. He took the school’s head coaching job without intentions of staying long. But as Park Tudor continued to win state championships, he couldn’t pry himself away. So he learned how to use the time he was given – just two hours per day – and spent half of the team’s practices on development. He ran a zone defense, just because it took less time to teach. That meant more time to develop fundamentals, he said.

“I’ve had about 60 guys over the last six or seven years that are playing professionally that I’ve worked with – a lot of them (NBA draft) lottery picks,” Schilling said. “And one thing that I’ve found is that, whether it’s the No. 1 pick, which we’ve had, to Gordon Hayward, to Mike Conley, to Jeff Teague, they all need the same things.”

Now, as UCLA’s development guru, he has already begun working on those things. The NCAA allows for two hours of practice each week over the course of the summer, and since arriving in Westwood, Schilling has made use of every spare minute. He’s already receiving rave reviews.

“There’s so much stuff that we get in those 40-minute periods,” senior forward Travis Wear said. “Everyone’s gotten to the point already of mental and physical exhaustion. Honestly … we’re all probably in game shape right now.”

Last year, Schilling’s reputation sparked an offer for him to become an NBA assistant again. He turned it down.

“It wasn’t the right timing,” he said.

But working with Alford, given their long-standing history, Schilling said was too good of an opportunity to turn down.

Alford and Schilling, both having grown up in the basketball-rich culture of southern Indiana, guarded each other in high school. Schilling worked at Alford’s dad’s basketball camp during the summer, and the two kept in contact. Years later, when Alford had the idea to write a book on basketball, he asked Schilling to help. Together, they created “Basketball Guard Play” – a 1998 manual on the guard position – by sitting down with a tape recorder and sharing stories and philosophies on the game.

Now, the two are working in conjunction again with Schilling setting the table this summer.

“We’ve focused (this summer) on laying a great foundation,” Schilling said. “As Steve gets ready to implement his system, they’re going to have the skill level and fundamentals necessary for the system he wants to employ.”

THE CARRY-OVER

It’s easy to understand why Alford would smooth over his transition from New Mexico to UCLA by hiring Broussard, who will be the do-everything assistant on UCLA’s staff. He’s a charmingly disarming character with a distinct sort of energy that’s hard to miss.

Alford has certainly noticed. Broussard’s path to Westwood has been intertwined with new UCLA coach’s since the 1996 Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, when Broussard’s Bradley team took on Alford and Southwest Missouri State in the semifinals.

With 10 seconds remaining on the clock and Bradley down one and the Braves’ timeout play already broken down, a mad scramble for the ball ensued. Finally, Bradley forward Deon Jackson grabbed it, with time running out and heaved it over his head toward the basket. It hit nothing but net. The Braves had miraculously won.

Alford and his team were stunned. Broussard and the Braves’ flooded the court in jubilation. And since that shot, a friendship had bloomed between Broussard, then just a Bradley graduate assistant, and Alford, who would soon move onto a coaching job at Iowa.

Now, having worked together since Alford took over at New Mexico, the two have an undeniable trust in each other – a trust that Alford clearly valued when he made Broussard his only carry-over from his former New Mexico staff.

“I have a tremendous amount of trust in him,” Broussard said. “He’s a fair-minded coach, a phenomenal competitor. Where he’s trying to get kids to go, he’s already been, so he’s got that leadership ability. … He’s one of the most focused guys I’ve been around. When it comes to practicing, coaching, weightlifting, it’s phenomenal. That attracted me to him when I first started working for him, and it’s been continually reinforced throughout the time that I’ve been his assistant. He’s treated me like a king, and he didn’t have to do that.”

Grace is the only member of UCLA’s new coaching staff that Alford hadn’t known for years before his hiring. By all accounts, he is the new guy.

And as the new guy, he understands the twists of fate that had to happen for him to get here, to his new office at the Morgan Center. His whole life, really, has been one big twist of fate.

Grace had always wanted to play basketball, but without money to pay his way to Northwestern State, where he’d been offered a walk-on spot, Grace joined the Air Force as an 18-year-old. After four years, he’d go play college ball, he reasoned. Then, his basketball career would start.

But it would be more than a decade later, after Grace fell in love with the military life, after he took part in Operation Desert Storm and lived all around the world, for basketball to really enter the picture. In his 30s, he felt his body begin to break down while playing base-level ball. It angered him; his game wasn’t what it used to be.

That’s when a supervisor suggested that he be a referee – a suggestion that would lead to the next chapter of his life. And after being re-stationed to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, he’d get his first coaching gig – as an AAU coach under the umbrella of AAU legend Boo Williams, coaching a 12-year-old team.

It was a long way off from being a college head coach like he envisioned, but Grace continued to work under the assumption that he was just one step, one break away from entering the college game. He made his way up the AAU ranks, all while getting his long-awaited college degree, working full-time at the Air Force, and raising his children as a single parent.

“People don’t realize what I went through to get to this point,” Grace said. “I would get up at 5, get to work at 6, go to work from 6-2:30, no lunch, take lunch-time classes on the Air Force base’s campus, get out, coach school during the season, and then go back home, do homework, and get a few hours of sleep.”

But soon it would pay off. After retiring from the military and working as a teacher at a South Mountain High in Phoenix, he took an assistant’s job with Sacramento State. The prospect of college coaching seemed as real as it ever had been for Grace, who took a $20,000 pay cut to become an assistant. His office was a tiny space in the corner of the locker room. He slept there often, opting not to go back to his studio apartment, which had been empty aside from a lonely mattress laying on the floor.

But eight years later, after stints at San Francisco and Oregon State, Grace got off a plane in Atlanta on his way to the Final Four and received a phone call from one of his coaching friends, who told him UCLA was interested. He didn’t believe it.

At 8 that night, Alford called and asked if he would sit down with him an hour later. Grace had already fielded calls from Craig Neal, New Mexico’s new coach and Alford’s replacement, to be the Lobos’ associate head coach, and he’d already scheduled an interview with Grand Canyon University to be a head coach. And in the lobby, Grace had run into new USC coach Andy Enfield, who wanted to speak with him that Monday about a potential assistant’s job. But Grace would already have a job by then.

“In my 22 years, I’ve never hired someone I didn’t really know,” Alford said at dinner that night. After repeating it for the third time, Grace interjected.

“Sir, I really appreciate that,” he told Alford, “but (Oregon State coach) Craig Robinson didn’t really know me either. … All the head coaches I worked for really never knew me.”

That night, Alford gave his recruiting coordinator job to Grace – a man who had been no more than a stranger to him just a few hours before.

Ryan Kartje is a sports features reporter, with a special focus on the NFL and college sports. He has worked for the Orange County Register since 2012, when he was hired as UCLA beat writer. His enterprise work on the rise and fall of the daily fantasy sports industry (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/industry-689093-fantasy-daily.html) was honored in 2015 with an Associated Press Sports Editors’ enterprise award in the highest circulation category. His writing has also been honored by the Football Writers Association of America and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Ryan worked for the Bloomington (Ind.) Herald-Times and Fox Sports Wisconsin, before moving out west to live by the beach and eat copious amounts of burritos.

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